Yesterday Maine voters chose to discriminate against an estimated 10% of the state’s citizens by repealing the law giving gay people the right to marry each other. Imagine having to get the permission of half of 536,000 people in order to marry the person you love.

Maine voters also chose to allow the sale of marijuana for medical purposes. Imagine how long racial desegregation of schools in Alabama and Mississippi would have taken in the 1960s if it had been put to a popular vote.

There’s a reason why the U.S. employs representative government instead of a pure democracy.

I’ve always been a big believer in social change by evolution rather than by revolution. You cannot healthily force social change; attempts to do so often lead to totalitarianism. In the latter case above, we’ve evolved one small step toward legalizing the use of a substance with no known toxicity effects and proven medical benefits. In the former, evolution still has a long way to go.

That being said, I begin to understand why revolutionaries tire of waiting.